April

2016

Weekly Round Up + Cotopaxi Volcano

Hola friends. Wow, what a busy week/weekend. Today my plan is to do the weekly round-up (a little late). Cool?

ROUND UP time!

LOS ANGELES: Tomorrow Largo and I will head to LA for six days. I love LA. I moved there right after college at the age of 21 and I grew in ways I could have never imagined. I made lifelong friends. I started my first business. We bought our first home and so much more. I am grateful for LA and all the positive changes and amazing friendships it brought to my life. I especially love that I get to share my friends, experiences and LA with my kids. Here we come!

TAXES: They are done! Enough said. I really, really, really dislike doing taxes. I am lucky enough (thank you tax gods) to be married to an accountant, but with two people who are self-employed, filing in three states and some other circumstances our taxes are complicated. But, they are officially done and filed. Fiesta time! Tell me… do you hate tax time as much as me?

LANGUAGE LEARNING: Remember last week when I was going to be on a panel talking about language learning and it got cancelled due to technical difficulties? Well, it has been rescheduled. I will post the details shortly, unfortunately I will be on an airplane so I won’t be able to take part. However, I am going to do a pre recorded segment with my thoughts on
language learning. I hope you can tune it, the panel is just amazing and they will be sharing their experiences and language learning resources.

SKIPPING SCHOOL FOR TRAVEL: Well, in my eyes travel is school in more ways than I can count. We learn so much from our travels that I hate to deny my children an experience.

Whenever I go to LA I take a child with me. When they were younger I would take both of them, but now I switch off. Largo gets to go this time. For the first time he is in a school that does not necessarily support pulling kids out for other educational opportunities. Frankly, I am not sure what the consequences will be. I have notified the teachers, asked for work while on the trip and apologized for the bad timing, but these things do happen. I also realized that kids leaving for trips is not convenient for the teachers, but I will not miss the opportunity to give my kids a travel experience (don’t hate me teacher friends). So, would you pull your kids out of school for a week or do you only travel during school vacations? Does your school give zeros for absences due to travel or do they embrace it?

RACE RUNNING: Well, I did it. I ran my first race. It was only a couple of miles, but it happened. Still don’t love running and I am not interested in running another race, or becoming a marathon runner (even though Will is secretly fantasizing about it). However, running has grown on me a little. I like how I feel and the cardio benefits. If you are a traveling family how do you stay fit?

COMMUNITY: I am working on a post related to this topic. How do you find it and create it while traveling? Most of you know I am a big fan of creating local community (and online community). It has enriched our travels immensely. This weekend (at our girls night celebration) I was reminded again why it is so therapeutic, fun, enlightening and just plain amazing to make new friends from different cultures. I hung out with three ladies who have endured tragedy, pursued dreams in a country that is not as supportive of equal rights as the US and lived passionately. I am blessed to travel and meet new people who inspire me to be a strong, more compassionate human being. Thank you ladies.

RESEARCH: We have our visa extension here in Ecuador, we have filed our taxes, we have selected our next country and now the research begins. Here we go again!

Will and I were interviewed last week about the HOW part of this travel life. I will share the interview when it goes live. The interviewer asked us how much work we put into where we will move next. I had to laugh. Folks we put in very little. Before we left the US we researched, googled, spreadsheeted (is that a word?) and analyzed it to death. Now we do the basics (cost of living, cultural richness, schools if applicable and language) and we commit. I guess our philosophy is if it is a terrible match we can move. It is that simple with our life because we only travel with what we can carry. It is not expensive for us to move. However, we can pretty much find the joy in any location (so far).

SHARING TIME!

TRAVEL REGARDLESS OF FEARS: These are some great words of advice for those of you considering putting the brakes on travel because of fear.

WORLDSCHOOLERS: Have you ever wondered what worldschoolers learn? Thanks for the shout out Jennifer.

OUTSIDE TIME: Do your kids get enough? I would like ours to have more, but in my eyes there is never enough. We have been lucky in Quito because we have an amazing park just two blocks away and in Costa Rica we had a huge yard. I hope the next location has the same access to green space.

EXPERIENCE OF THE WEEK!

COTOPAXI VOLCANO: Several months ago when my parents were visiting we took a trip to Cotopaxi volcano. I must admit I was less than thrilled to see ANOTHER volcano (remember we spent a year in Costa Rica), but this one looked pretty darn cool from a distance. I highly recommend a visit to Cotopaxi and if you get a chance tryout some local food at Rositas. Yum!

Post navigation

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment

Name *

Email *

Website

About

WorldTowning is all about living the world – one hometown at a time. Several years ago, I was living in Boston with my husband and 2 children, working in corporate America. But, we dreamt of giving our children an epic adventure. Come along on our journey. I think you’ll be inspired to live your dreams.